Still waiting for Apple to make anything anywhere as good as the Pismo was. I've had hardware issues of one kind or another with every single laptop from them since then.
One problem with the Pismo (and probably other laptops at the time) was that the backlight would become very dim.
You could buy replacement backlights, but installing them was really difficult. Even if you managed to not break the very thin glass tube, aligning it in a way not to cast any shadows was tricky.
I think that the newer, LED-backlit displays actually have a much longer lifetime (apart from "Flexgate").
Anecdotal experience, but never had any issues with the Pismo, which I used well past the mid-2000s. I did have screen problems with the first titanium PowerBook G4, flickering, glitching, and then after a few months the thing just died and had to be replaced. That was after the hard disk failed as well in the first month of use. And it's been one thing or another ever since then. Being an Apple customer of several decades, I sincerely do not understand this myth of fantastic quality they have. I have had IBM and Lenovo fail much less, and HP... Actually never.
Edit ： Just checked dates, and yes, I used the Pismo for 8 years. The PowerBook G4 barely 3 years and couldn't get rid of it fast enough.
Maybe it's just me, but I never did like the change to metal all that much. I have both plastic and metal laptops now and still dislike metal. Typing on a plasticky HP right now with certainly a better keyboard than the MacBook, but let's not get started with that...
Edit ： I was using for a while both the PowerBook G3 and the PowerBook G4, and much as I tried, I hated the latter as much as I loved the former, and the G3 outlived the G4 by a couple of years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerBook_G3#PowerBook_(FireWi...